No change heading into Thanksgiving week.

It was a frustrating 0.0 change at today's weigh-in, leaving me at a stagnant 217.2 heading into Thanksgiving week. And the mind-numbing, embarrassing plateau continues.

I needed to make progress this past week to guard against the next, and evidently I failed to do it. I don't necessarily have a defeatist mentality about the upcoming week, but I want to look at it realistically. I'm not going to be counting calories on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; I will eat reasonably just as I did during the 35-day period earlier. More than likely, though, given the plateau that I am currently struggling to break, I will post a higher number next week and have even more ground to make up. The goal remains, however, to avoid overall weight gain during the holidays and hopefully reach 20 total pounds of loss before the new year. That goal gets more and more lofty with each passing disheartening weigh-in, but it's still attainable.

Daily calorie totals for the next week - that is, today, Monday, and Tuesday - will be posted here. On the other days I will likely be eating in the 2,000-2,500 calorie range, which should not cause weight gain in a normal individual. We'll see what happens.

Then again, a normal 24-year-old man also would have lost weight averaging about 1,800 calories consumed over the course of a week. And the mind-numbing plateau continues.